


who says he knows love

by neros_violin



Category: The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, First Time, Flash Forward, Intimacy, Love, M/M, Multi, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neros_violin/pseuds/neros_violin
Summary: The day after tomorrow, he will kill the man he loves.
Relationships: Jehane bet Ishak/Ammar ibn Khairan, Miranda Belmonte/Rodrigo Belmonte, Rodrigo Belmonte/Ammar ibn Khairan, Rodrigo Belmonte/Jehane bet Ishak/Ammar ibn Khairan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	who says he knows love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iberiandoctor (Jehane)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/gifts).



> Thank you, iberiandoctor, for the excellent prompt and for the opportunity to write for these amazing characters. Happy Yuletide!

The tent flap falls closed behind him as he enters. The brightness of the moons disappear again to darkness, and Ammar thinks _he smells the same_. Horse, leather, the sharpness of ink. End of day sweat and shaving soap. 

The air moves around him but he makes no sound. Ammar waits and listens, straining to hear the scuff of boots over the deepening thud of his heartbeat. Was he coming closer? Was he drawing a weapon? Was he thinking _he smells the same_ too?

Ammar had known, of course, when he decided to come here that he would react strongly, that it would be difficult and thrilling and awful and wonderful. He hadn’t tried to prepare himself because there is no preparing for this, in the space between knowing and being known by one of the few people who could claim it of him. 

He wishes fiercely for Jehane, her calming presence and the way she grounded their sparks, but when he said _shall we pay him a visit then, my darling?_ she bit the inside of her cheek the way she did when she was trying not to cry and didn’t want to show it and said _I can’t_ and he knew she meant that in the absolute sense of the words, because they cost her to say, this woman whose will was the strongest he’d ever encountered. She could not, and he did not begrudge her that.

Ammar thought she correctly guessed what was coming, an eventuality more inevitable than this vicious war, though she hadn’t said it yet, or asked; by silent mutual agreement, they sought to live in a less terrible reality for as long as they could.

“I’m going to have to beat my sentries, you know.” His voice. Laced with an undercurrent of laugher and chagrin, so familiar and wanted that Ammar’s teeth ache. Farther away than he would like but it gives him room to parry.

“Is that necessary? They didn’t have a chance against me.”

“True. But discipline requires reinforcement of principle,” he says, and strikes a flame to light the candle set on the table at the centre of the room. His face is in profile, but Ammar can see his softly curving lips through the dark of his beard and the fire dancing in his eyes.

“Principles are over cited,” Ammar absently forces past the tightness in his throat, taking in everything: a soft but worn canvas shirt, color lost to gray, tucked neatly into riding trousers tucked neatly into the same leather boots he always wore on their raiding campaigns; omnipresent whip coiled on one hip and a shining short sword hanging from the other; hair flattened and mussed from wearing a hat all day and running his fingers over his scalp when he finally removed it. A general in repose, safe in the heart of his camp, orders given, soldiers settled, as close to ease as one can get in circumstances such as these.

He turns to face Ammar directly, leans against the table for a moment with arms crossed loosely over his chest, set into the perfect stillness his body is capable of. Ammar has seen him look just this way before someone else’s blood stains the ground. 

_I should not have said that_ , he thinks, remembering their last devastated words outside a small village along the river that ran into Fezana, not remembering the last time he said something he hadn’t meant to. Since he was a child, surely, if then.

As if he’s reading Ammar’s mind: “They certainly are,” he says. “Is that why you’ve come? To abandon your principles and join me, at last?”

An almost unforgivably cruel thing to say, if Ammar hadn’t asked himself that question not five minutes before, waiting alone in the pitch black, and if Ammar wasn’t able to hear the sincere yearning in his voice. It still hurts, takes his breath and opens wounds barely scabbed over, even after so much time.

“I’m sorry,” he says, straightening to his full height as if remembering who he is. “I should not have said that. Forgive me, please. I am not-” He bows his head briefly, eyes shut, and his shoulders rise and fall twice. “I am not at my best. It has been a long--” A long day? A long war? A long time? He doesn’t say, but all of it is true.

“It is I who should apologize,” Ammar says. “I surprised you.”

He laughs, briefly and sharply. “No, my friend. I am not at all surprised.”

“Was I late, then?”

“Of course not. Today, you were invited.”

Ammar grins. It had been easy to see the opportunities to sneak into the camp, just a little bit better aligned than they had been yesterday or the day before, to identify his tent and find the right timing to slip inside, unnoticed as an outsider. So enticingly neat, patterns he could identify and analyze and execute. He’d been led like a rat in the sewers to a tasty piece of cheese, excited by admiration and fondness and a familiar, unbearable sensation of recognition. 

“In that case, do you really have to beat the sentries?”

“Principle,” he reminds Ammar, and for the first time, they share a smile. It’s like looking in a mirror, if he had different hair and eyes and skin and bones, his soul absurdly reflected in someone else’s body. 

“I’ve missed you, Rodrigo,” Ammar says baldly, without shame. It comes out of him like his best poetry, true and distilled to the deepest essence of what matters.

He crosses the space between them in four long steps. Ammar’s body doesn’t even tense, as though it’d expected the rough-skinned, fine-boned hands to cradle his jaw, gentle thumbs to brush his cheekbones, and wind-chapped lips to press against his own. He kisses Ammar once, twice, moistened only by the breath that escapes between their mouths. Again, wetter, with his tongue sliding enticingly along the seam of Ammar’s lips, sending fire along Ammar’s nerves, setting him ablaze with only the contact of his mouth. He withdraws after a time with a lingering trail of his fingers down the path of Ammar’s collarbone. “My poet. My dear. My love.” He looks amused, likely at himself and at the look Ammar is sure rests on his face. 

Ammar once strode into a palace to murder the last khalif of Al-Rassan in broad daylight, but of the two of them, Rodrigo was the first to choose risk if an opportunity lay on the other side of it and found joy in the taking. “I’ve missed you, too.”

***

_In the many battles of his lifetime, Rodrigo Belmonte has experienced the slip-slide of his perception into a new state of being. Some call it battle lust, or being God-possessed, or the body’s natural way of preparing for and processing danger (Jehane)._

_Whatever it is called, he has known it to be a juxtaposition of extremes: his vision takes in minute details with precision he’s never been able to duplicate in other circumstances (apart, perhaps, from unpredictably free lovemaking) while his body speeds up, takes over his mind, moves without forethought or hindsight, completely in the present._

_It is thrilling, and terrifying, and it has gotten him through fights he should have lost and fucking he remembers years later._

_Today, watching Ammar get closer on the back of a beautiful mount, still feeling the echoes of their last encounter in his body, he does not want it to come._

_But what he wants and what he will get do not always, or even often, align (though that makes the moments that they do even sweeter), and he feels it start, tingling along his spine, gathering like storm clouds. The urge to best, to win, to survive, the certainty that he can and he will, because he wills it. Because he has a wife and two living sons who he wants to see grown. Because it is not in him to do otherwise._

_They draw their horses alongside, legs brushing together. He waits several moments, feeling warmth seep into his calf through leather, but Ammar does not speak._

_“Have you words for me?” he asks, a little desperately._

_Ammar’s striking blue eyes rise to his, filled with sorrow and the same fight he knows is in his own, balanced always, especially here. Perversely, the thing rising inside of him surges, flares brighter and higher, as true and exciting as arousal. It has desired Ammar from the beginning, from those first moments of recognition in Badir’s court to the first fight they had together back to back, like dancing._

_Soon, it will have him._

_“There are no words for this.”_

***

With someone else, Ammar might have expected to ease the seduction with words, or to soften the edges with alcohol. He is certain that Rodrigo Belmonte has never taken another man as a lover, and has not had any woman but his wife during the long years of their marriage.

He is equally certain that Rodrigo would have not have kissed him on an impulse. He has thought about this, possibly fantasized about this, quite probably planned how to walk Ammar into it just like he walked him into this tent. 

Ammar watches Rodrigo’s eyes go darker as he licks his lips and smiles slowly, with every bit of his extensive carnal experience showing in the curl of his lips. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” A sincerely meant question, a taunt, and a challenge.

Rodrigo takes a step back from him, lays the blade and the whip carefully down on the table beside the bed. Begins loosening his belt with more haste. “I think I have some idea, yes.” He yanks his top out of his pants and pulls it over his head without hesitation, revealing the war-hardened planes of his chest and abdomen. “Why? Are you going to teach me something?”

Ammar looks, greedy to catalogue changes since the last time they shared a cold bath in some stream on the road to Fezana, remembering Rodrigo’s body with a clarity he didn’t know he was intentionally cultivating. He has lost weight, of course, his lower ribs starting to show the smallest bit under hard slabs of muscle. He has a new scar on his left bicep, jagged but fully healed. 

His eyes - bright, inquisitive, attentive - have not changed at all, nor has that insufferable, damnably attractive smirk. Ammar wants to take him, badly, to have that mouth drop open in shocked pleasure, to have it wrapped around his fingers, his cock. He wants to put his own mouth around those small, dark nipples so much that saliva collects on his tongue. He wants to leave visible love marks with his teeth and invisible love marks with tender, reverent kisses. He wants to taste clean skin and sweat, to know the texture of the hair on Rodrigo’s legs, to sink into him with as many parts of himself as it is to possible use.

He wants to give him everything.

Ammar stares into those eyes, crowds him, makes him feel the brush of his clothes against Rodrigo’s bare skin, bringing attention to the disparity. Watches it come into his awareness with a quickly indrawn breath. Wraps his fingers gently around Rodrigo’s upper arm, covering the new scar, and squeezes, slowly, light pressure that intensifies enough to leave bruises. “I will,” he promises.

***

_When their mounts have cleared, Rodrigo doesn’t hesitate. The first swing of his sword slices through the waning light with speed and confidence that Ammar will parry easily, and he does. Their blades ring out when they make contact, like the initiation of a ceremony._

_The ground is good for fighting, even, mostly free of rocks and debris. It makes for smooth footwork as they trade a series of fast, hard blows, and it really is like dancing, warming up for more serious business to come._

_There is only a moment of discordance: Ammar stumbles over one of the few stones in the field, dropping his shield. Rodrigo moves to strike without conscious thought, jumping on the vulnerability, but Ammar blocks with his sword before rolling smoothly to his feet and regaining his shield in the same motion._

_They resume as though nothing had interrupted them, back to the perfect coordination of their dance._

_He marks the minutes by the way the sinking sunlight hits the vines on Ammar’s helm. They’ve been fighting for long enough that he’s beginning to sweat under his armour, feeling a light heat in his muscles. The world has been reduced and widened to the sound of his breath and Ammar’s, metal striking and sliding against metal, the occasional grunt of effort._

_They are perfectly matched, and even as he delights in it, he dreads it because he has realized: he is going to lose._

_He is going to lose, because they are perfectly matched in all things but age, and Rodrigo is tiring in ways that Ammar is not. The part of him that seeks survival above all else is already calculating, planning for a way to even the odds, and the part of him that loves is already grieving, for Miranda and the boys. For Jehane and her loving heart. For Ammar and what he will have to do._

_They both accepted that one would have to kill the other as their duty, but acceptance in the mind and acceptance in the heart do not often come together at once; one must drag the other to the end, unwilling, and even then, one cannot prepare the other for the moment when whatever it has not yet accepted comes to pass. Someone will not live through this - and Rodrigo is sure now, that it is his role in the play - and someone else might not survive accepting it._

_He parries a low blow, and is planning to attack Ammar’s left side - his weakest, inasmuch as he can be said to have a weak side - when Ammar’s shield hits him; he’s thrown it, the lunatic. Rodrigo’s not prepared, falls to the ground, gains his knees before Ammar attacks. He brings his sword up reflexively, blocking with enough force that Ammar is thrown back. He has just enough space to roll, dropping his shield for mobility, scrambling to his feet._

_They are both without defense._

_Ammar’s blade clashes against his with desperation. Rodrigo would like to think Ammar’s been taken over by blood lust but he has never been comfortable lying to himself, even when it might be comforting. Ammar has also come to a conclusion about who is going to lose and who is going to win and he is trying to push himself to do it, mercy for both of them._

_But it quickly becomes clear, as they slash and parry, whip their blades into a frenzy that shouldn’t be possible this deep into a fight, that Ammar cannot, or perhaps will not. None of his strikes are landing seriously._

_He is still dancing, though the music has ended._

_Rodrigo’s muscles are burning now, his lungs heaving for air to fuel their impossible pace. He does not have long and he is already imagining it over, nearing the loss of his control, when his blade finds a weak spot in Ammar’s guard. His sword sinks deep into Ammar’s side, striking bone, and they both gasp as Ammar pulls free. He swings again, hopelessly, helplessly, he’d been so sure it would be him, he was sure-_

_He sees the flash of Ammar’s eyes as he pivots quickly to one side, his sword in a two-handed grip now, mouth moving in words Rodrigo doesn’t need to hear to understand-_

_But he does hear the blade cut the air, a split second before it cuts into his body, and everything ends._

***

Sweat slicks their bodies, hot and sticky in the closed tent, but they don’t part. Rodrigo is on his back, Ammar half atop him, his ear pressed close to Rodrigo’s steady, slow heartbeat. 

His own heartbeat is staccato, though they finished the act many minutes ago. For all that they joked about Rodrido’s inexperience, this part is new to Ammar. Precious. He fears losing it.

For one ugly second, he is sickeningly jealous of Miranda Belmonte, who has had Rodrigo this way, replete and peaceful, hundreds or thousands of times, and who may have it again. Ammar won’t. 

One way or another, Ammar won’t, not ever. But as wise men (idiots, all of them) have said in consolation for unbearable loss, surely having it once is better than never knowing what it was like. Ammar cannot judge if it is better, this knowing, nor does he understand why it would be helpful to do so. Better or worse, he will take in each detail of sensation and experience and store it in a treasure box in his mind to take out and look at it, again and again if he has the opportunity. He will whisper it into Jehane’s ear as they make love the next night so that she can carry it for them, if-

“It will be the day after tomorrow,” Rodrigo murmurs, trailing his fingertips lightly over the skin of Ammar’s back, as if he too is committing something soft and fine to memory.

“Yes,” Ammar says. “The moons will be nearly full. It is tradition.” It tastes bitter in his mouth like poison, when you want the victim to know they have been poisoned. The perfect unfairness, the stupid, hateful poetry of it, the weight of religions and empires on their backs, using their bodies in effigy. It makes him sick as it makes him aware of his place in this world, in this story. 

“Shall we make plans, then?”

They do. In quiet voices, their skin still hot and damp and close, they plan for either outcome. They reveal the places they have hidden wealth and the best routes to safe destinations. They forecast eventualities and contingencies and who of their loved ones should be sent to their trusted people. Ammar is reminded of quiet nights in the City, the three of them talking, planning, talking, laughing, so delighted by one another, almost smug with the pleasure of having each other. It shouldn’t be like that, talking about this, but it is, somehow, the same flawless connection and the same effortless understanding.

They are who they are, and that is why they’re here.

When it’s done, Rodrigo exhales roughly, shakily, for the first time letting his strength leave him, for only a moment. Ammar searches for words, but says the only ones that matter.

“I am glad to know you,” he says, squeezing tighter against Rodrigo’s body, his hand over the heart that still beats strong and true. “I will love you, when it happens, no matter what.”

“And I you. It will have been my honor.”

That is what it will come down to, in the end: the two of them, together, until one of them falls.

The day after tomorrow, he will kill the man he loves.

***

_After the roar of the armies died down, after Rodrigo went down and died, there was silence._

_Ammar kneels beside Rodrigo’s body, and is lost, for some time. His own blood trickles slowly into the dirt, into mud they made with their churning feet, and their sweat, and now, their blood together. He must rise, let Rodrigo’s people deal with-_

_-the body-_

_-and he must go to Jehane, to be stitched back together with her careful hands and words._

_The need to scream rises unbidden from deep within him. He cannot hold this much grief and rage alone, and he cannot give it to another human being; it would break them, he’s sure of it, so he gives it to One who can take it. Who should. Who deserves to bear this unbearable weight._

_He bows his head under a starless, moonless, sunless sky, waiting for the blow of a sword that will never come, and cries._


End file.
